Antlers and Scales: Monster Falls
by DrCaitlinSnow
Summary: An overview of what would happen in the lives of our heroes if the cure was never found. Dipper-centric. No shipping. One shot.


**Author's Note: This is just a little thing I wrote a while back, but my friend just became available to proofread, so here it is! Inspired by this awesome art: ** post/106034100581/dipstick-u-can-like-barely-see-those-stubs-of

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><p>The cure never came.<p>

No matter who searched or how they searched, they couldn't find a cure. So, they gave up. Just decided it wasn't a totally bad life and started adapting.

Nymphs and other garden spirits helped provide for those with specific vegetable and fruit related needs. Those who could do so without scaring off the animals began herding cattle and raising sheep for the large carnivorous population.

They eventually got used to being THAT tourist town, the one some people had conspiracies about, but most people just thought was all good fun, elaborate makeup, and costumes with robotics.

Mabel and Dipper's parents died in a car crash on their way to pick the two up from their Grunkle. Well, that's what Stan told them. In reality, Bill had killed them. The strange little town agreed that it was sick, but the being's thought process made sense. There was no chance that they would be reported to some crazy scientists who would want to dissect them.

The babies that were been born after the water catastrophe were born humans and became monsters within the next week, but they were almost never the same species as either parent.

The people began to live longer. Many were now immortal, like the vampires and all other forms of the undead. The were-animals seemed to have impressively prolonged life spans, while some just stopped aging all together after they hit a certain age. The nature spirits, like Dipper himself, stopped aging sometime between the ages of 15 and 30, while others de-aged until they hit that mark. After much speculation and a plague of sickness throughout the forest dwellers when a logging company briefly hit the edge of the forest before they were scared away by the creatures and land protection laws, they came to the conclusion that they would live as long as their forest lived. Those who were now made out of stone, clay, or a similar material occasionally needed some repairs, but it seemed that as long as they kept themselves well groomed, their lives would continue.

After an awkward phase, people got over their insecurities and were willing to do what waste comfortable for their new bodies. It wasn't uncommon to see a werewolf chasing a small animal, or to find someone grazing in the woods.

People learned to deal and adapt.

And Dipper, well, he learned to forgive himself.

He had continued to search for a cure long after the rest of the town had accepted their fate. Eventually, when Dipper was about 16, he managed to find a way for the whole town back to their original species for one day a year, but that's a story for another time. For a time longer than all the rest, he held on to, immersed himself in the past, but he went much, much, too deep. It was a slow process for him.

When he was 13, his antlers started coming in. The little white nubs on the sides of his head gave him an inexplicable and huge sense of pride, not that he would ever let anyone other than Mabel know it. As Dipper aged, the white spots that marked him as a fawn faded into his rich auburn fur. He exchanged his vest and shirt for a short sleeved white tee and a red plaid button down that he rarely actually buttoned. His antlers grew to be strong cream tangles that spread, rather majestically in his opinion, in a slightly upward direction. Unlike a full deer, his antlers never fell off. His antlers stopped growing when he was about twenty, but then, so did he.

It wasn't apparent in the first 3 or so years, but after his 23rd year he noticed the lack of change in his appearance. He knew it was going to happen some day, but the idea was so very different from the reality. The shock that he would never get old as long as his home thrived... He could have never been prepared. After some review of the past few years, they realized Mabel had had her aging frozen in time around the same time Dipper had, but this wasn't a surprise. The Mystery Twins were in it together, no matter what.

Around 25, Dipper forgave himself.

Although, many people wondered what he had to forgive himself for in the first place. After all, he had nothing to do with the catastrophe. The town had been low on water supply and an executive decision was made to pull water from the springs and rivers found in the wood. It was just rotten luck that they happened to pick the magical ones. True, Dipper had stumbled into the water before the water had begun to be distributed throughout the small town, but how was that his fault?

Let me tell you, for I do understand. Dipper became a cervitaur in the woods before the water was distributed. And he tried, he tried so very hard to drag himself through the wood, to walk to the town and warn them, stop them. But he couldn't. He couldn't walk because he was young in his ways and unused to such a odd and different gait, but his mind, the deepest and darkest parts translated it differently. He was too weak, too slow, not a fast enough learner, he was pathetic and couldn't even balance with four whole feet, or rather hooves, to keep him steady. He was useless, and the town was doomed because he wasn't good enough.

So he felt obligated by his undeserved guilt to search for a cure, to free everyone from this curse and the bounty every scientist in the world would have on their head if they were ever discovered.

But finally, in his 25th year of life, he didn't become human on that one day a year, and he took this as a sign from his own soul. He needed to forgive himself for tripping into that water, and he needed to forgive whoever enchanted that water in the first place. And he did.

He moved on, lived life, and oh, what a life he lived! His and his sister's adventures were recorded by a local girl, who turned them into a book series by the name of The Glow from the Wood.

He required little from the town, as most all of his food came from the land itself, and he would graze as needed. The water was fresh, and upon discovering that the pool that changed them all would never run out and would no longer affect them in any way, many, including himself, used it as a water source. The few things he need from the town were easily gotten using royalties the girl who wrote the book series based on his life gave him.

The books had become immensely popular, which his family teased him about nonstop, and the girl had fortunately found a way to conceal her true nature for interviews and other events.

His life was far from peaceful, what with all the crazy things the red and gold book filled with the town's secrets threw his way, but crazy isn't always bad, as his sister had taught him. So he lived his crazy life, his peaceful life, his what-the-heck-I-told-you-that-button-would-free-the-monster-why-would-you-press-it-Mabel life.

And life was good.


End file.
